Accounting Tips Guides

Just because a doctor owns his own practice does not mean that he is doing particularly well. It might be true, but it also may not be. A physician does not necessarily have the right business skills to run his office and will not be very successful monetarily. They can be the best doctors in the world but they must have the right skills in billing for their practice to reap the rewards.

If the doctor is smart enough to recognize this weakness, he can hire the services of a medical billing company to take care of all his office needs.

Trained professionals who know all the ins and outs of insurance and medical billing staff a medical billing company. They are capable of handling all aspects of making claims to the insurance company and getting the payments in on time.

Insurance companies don’t make things easy for the medical practice. They have a tendency to deny claims at the drop of a hat.

If the practice is very busy and sees a great many patients there will be a lot of claims that need to be submitted to the insurance company. If only one member of the practices staff is handling this they will have to manually fill out and submit the claims for every patient that goes through the office. If there is one mistake on these claims the insurance company will deny it immediately and send it back. Now that one person has to refill out the form correctly in addition to the new claims that they must do every day.

Even when everything is done right it can still take the insurance company a very long time to send the payment. For a small practice this can spell disaster. If there are a couple of denials and late payments this can effectively put the practice out of business.

A medical billing company can put all of those worries to rest. The staff of the practice will no longer have to do all of the work that is required for the insurance companies. The billing company utilizes professionals who will be able to get all of the claims filled out and filed in a timely manner. They will also be able to use electronic means to file the claims. This gets rid of the manual method of submitting claims.

The professional at the medical billing company will also make sure that the claim makes it all the way through to the insurance company and is paid. They take the time to monitor the claims all the way through the process. Medical billing companies have a very high success rate for getting their claims paid.

When a claim is submitted electronically it will be denied or accepted immediately. When it is accepted the funds will be sent to the practice within a few days instead of the months that it could take with a manual system.

For a smaller practice this is a big deal. To get their money in a timely manner is the one factor that will decide if they are in business in a week. For practices that think a medical billing company is too costly to justify, they should sit down and figure out what it is costing them to do it in their current manner.

This type of billing company will be beneficial for any practice, regardless of the specialty.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing company. One of the types of clients that Peter helps are medical billing companies and medical billing services

Hurricane Katrina’s showed us very clearly that we are very susceptible to any major halt or reduction in oil production. With prices souring since the Katrina tragedy the term “cheap gas” is as extinct as the dinosaurs. The Hurricane Katrina cutoff came from a natural disaster, of course, but the larger threat is a political.

Amazingly enough, two-thirds of the world’s established oil treasury lie in and around the Persian Gulf area; these countries, led by Saudi Arabia, now supply about a quarter of today’s oil. This flow could be interrupted at any time for a wide range of reasons — terrorism, war, domestic upheaval, deliberate cuts, just to name a few. Many other major oil exporters are equally unpredictable: Russia (the No. 2 exporter), Venezuela (No. 5) and Nigeria (No. 8).

More than 60 percent of our oil use goes for transportation, subjugated by in large by road travel. It’s a fable that encouraging more fuel-efficient vehicles means that we will all have to drive the smallest of autos. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Fuel efficiency isn’t dictated by the size of your auto but by the performance of its engine. We will not go back to having cheap gas until we utilize the technology to make more efficient automobiles.

The introduction of “hybrid” vehicles — combining internal-combustion engines and electric motors — promises fuel efficiency gains of 10 percent to 50 percent based on accessible technologies. But it’s also a myth that simply issuing tougher fuel standards will bring instant relief. We have to look at the efficiency of the cars we are driving and that will determine how much or how little fuel we use. And, of course that does determine if we will be buying cheap gas in the near future or not.

It’s going to take a long time; you’ve got 225 million vehicles out there. It may take as long as 15 years to turn over the entire fleet of automobiles on our highways. In fact, the math is worse than that. From 2008 to 2025, the number of vehicles may grow by 50 percent, projects the Energy Information Administration. The swell reflects more people (from today’s 297 million to 351 million in 2025) and potential higher incomes. To keep total gasoline utilization stable, average fuel efficiency must improve by approximately 50 percent.

We should be able to do this. Car companies can shift decisively toward hybrids and it is now very easy to convert your existing auto into a hydrogen from water hybrid very cheaply. Regardless of the hype, annual new hybrid sales will amount to a meager 234,000 sales out of about 17 million.

If companies are to be pushed toward building more hybrids, they have to be assured of strong demand, because there’s a downside. On average, hybrids cost $3,000 to $4,000 more than conventional cars. Again, as of late, many people are finding it much cheaper to convert their own vehicles to hydrogen hybrids for less than a couple of hundred dollars.

The traditional U.S. car companies — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — are unfortunately the least prepared for change. They tied their fortunes to the biggest SUVs and pickups and right now the smaller foreign car producers seem to be leading the push toward hybrids. Cheap gasoline can come from two areas, at the pump or by how much, or more precisely how little fuel that auto uses.

Government needs to cultivate a market for fuel efficiency, although the consumers are no longer waiting for the government to act. With the public becoming more aware of the water for fuel technology people are starting to make the shift on their own. Americans now know that the era of cheap gasoline is history and are now purposely looking for more cost efficient ways to travel.

It’s not a national tragedy for someone to trade an Expedition for a Taurus. Some drivers will want to turn to a hybrid versions of their present vehicles; others will downsize. Cheap gas may be history, but greater fuel efficiency is the mark of the future for us all.

Michael Littles is a big supporter of the continued development of Hydrogen as a fuel source and provides a free video for all those who want to learn more about this technology in order to save 35% to 50% on your fuel costs. Get your free video by visiting: http://www.h2o-n2fuel.com

Maybe you are one of the numerous taxpayers who have been affected by tax penalties levied by the IRS, as you were not able to pay your tax dues on time. It is obvious that for the taxpayers who have tax debts, the IRS will swiftly asses penalties and late fees on the due amount.

The interest may not be very high, but will accrue at a considerable rate and can increase your liability in general which will make it tougher to pay back to the IRS.

In case you have a very big amount of unpaid taxes and what you had to pay originally was much less than at present, then it is a good option of seeking tax relief by way of penalty abatement

What this means is that you as the taxpayer can get a total or part forgiveness of the money you owe to the IRS. And there are actually a number of cases where the IRS removes 100% of the penalty.

The IRS makes decisions on case to case basis, and this is very heartening as the reasonable cause can be anything as long as you can convince them of your inability to pay the tax and it also depends on your circumstances.

In fact, IRS guidelines generously suggest that abatement should be “generally granted when the taxpayer exercises ordinary business care and prudence” in trying to pay their taxes.

Penalty abatement is a very good chance for you to put forward your case to the IRS. Penalty abatement unlike other tax relief claims presents a human face of your case and that surely helps things going in your favor.

It is even possible that the IRS gives back the penalties which you have already paid to them on your tax defaults.

Penalty abatement gives an opportunity to a taxpayer to reduce the levied interest and penalties for some reasons as mentioned below.

-Reasonable cause is a very considerate clause by the IRS. In case you were conscious of tax laws, someone passed away in the family, you have been suffering from a serious ailment and could not do the needful then you can be eligible for penalty abatement.

-The other reason why you can ask for penalty abatement is administrative waivers. In case of some untoward adversity like natural disaster, bad advice from a tax professional, new to tax filing, mental problems, being unemployed for a long time, misplacing financial records or any other such problems.

-Another important reason for asking for this tax relief is when there has been a mistake from the side of the IRS in assessing your case or there was some wrong advice given by them when you filed your taxes.

There are three ways to present a case for abatement; written, verbal and through Form 843. The choice is yours but it is imperative to clarify your reason for asking penalty abatement and also explain how difficult it was for you to pay the tax dues. One can’t be sure of the result of your appeal, but you have better chances of abatement if your reasons are convincing enough.

You should be prepared for tough questioning from the IRS even if you have stated your case very well. Present your case forcefully and be persuasive and you may have a good chance of being granted penalty abatement.

Neil Lemons is a freelance writer on behalf of Allied Tax Solutions, a company of 20 year ex-IRS agents who help you negotiate your tax debt for pennies on the dollar. For more info on penalty abatement check out http://www.alliedtaxsolutions.com